Tag: Cold War

The rising hysteria about Russia is best understood as fulfilling two needs for Official Washington: the Military Industrial Complex's transitioning from the “war on terror” to a more lucrative “new cold war” – and blunting the threat that a President Trump poses to the neoconservative/liberal-interventionist foreign-policy establishment.
By hyping the...

The “fake news” hysteria has become the cover for the U.S. government and mainstream media to crack down on fact-based journalism that challenges Official Washington’s “Group Thinks.”
A key reason why American foreign debacles have been particularly destructive mostly to the countries attacked but also to the United States is...

By any number of measures, Washington’s Russia policy has failed. While ostensibly suffering from diplomatic and economic isolation under a U.S.-led international sanctions regime, Moscow has succeeded in challenging a wide range of American interests, most notably in Ukraine, Syria, and cyberspace. Coming up with a new approach on Russia should therefore be a top priority for either President Hillary Clinton or President Donald Trump soon after Jan. 20, 2017.

In reaction to US words and deeds, the Kremlin is preparing the Russian nation for the possibility of war.
Nation Contributing Editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. Continuing the subject of last week’s discussion—the growing possibility of actual military...

Because we're in danger of getting exactly that.
I wish I could say things were improving between the US and Russia but they aren't. They're rapidly worsening.
There’s so much happening right now, I can only provide a summary of a few of the more interesting and worrying developments.
This report builds...

With the collapse of yet another arms reduction agreement, Washington and Moscow are now sitting on a stockpile of plutonium good for tens of thousands of nuclear weapons.
The other day, a little present arrived in the mail. It was book, or rather a pair of doorstops. Titled Doomed to...

The United States and Russia are now at daggers drawn over Syria. Following the collapse of the ceasefire negotiated last month by Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the United States has abandoned talks with the Russians on Syria. Meanwhile, in a supposedly unrelated part...

The proposed Obama-Putin cooperation was killed by its enemies in Washington, with dire implications.
Nation Contributing Editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War.
The focus is on the Obama administration’s termination of months-long negotiations with Moscow for a joint US-Russian campaign...

Moscow has accused Washington of sabotaging the Syria ceasefire deal, saying that the US will be responsible for any new terror attacks in Syria, as by taking no action against Al-Nusra terrorists it shows it is ready “to make a deal with the devil.”
Washington “has never exerted any real...

The rise of Trump—and Bernie Sanders too—vastly transcends ordinary politics. In fact, it reaches deep into a ruined national economy that has morphed into rank casino capitalism under the misguided policies and faithless rule of the Washington and Wall Street elites.
This epic deformation has delivered historically unprecedented set-backs to...

The enemies of détente with Russia sabotaged Obama's proposed alliance with Russia in Syria while the American presidential debate ignored all the perilous issues inherent in the Cold War.
Nation Contributing Editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. In this...

The narrow roads are quiet and winding, surrounded by rolling green fields and few visible signs of life beyond the occasional herd of sheep. But on the horizon, massive white golf ball-like domes protrude from the earth, protected behind a perimeter fence that is topped with piercing razor wire. Here, in the heart of the tranquil English countryside, is the National Security Agency’s largest overseas spying base.

The escalating anti-Russian rhetoric in the U.S. presidential campaign comes in the midst of a major push by military contractors to position Moscow as a potent enemy that must be countered with a drastic increase in military spending by NATO countries.
Weapon makers have told investors that they are relying on tensions...

WASHINGTON — The Syrian military was foundering last year, with thousands of rebel fighters pushing into areas of the country long considered to be government strongholds. The rebel offensive was aided by powerful tank-destroying missiles supplied by the Central Intelligence Agency and Saudi Arabia.
Intelligence assessments circulated in Washington that...

For the first time in recent memory, large numbers of Americans are openly questioning their country’s grand strategy. An April 2016 Pew poll found that 57 percent of Americans agree that the United States should “deal with its own problems and let others deal with theirs the best they...

The controversial North Stream 2 gas pipeline project has the potential to resurrect cold war divisions in Europe, US Energy Envoy Amos Hochstein said, before calling for greater competition with Russia’s Gazprom through increased LNG imports.
Amos Hochstein is US Special Envoy for International Energy Affairs. He spoke to EurActiv...

Cohen says the media at large is doing a huge disservice to the American people by ignoring the substance of Trump's arguments about NATO and Russia, and buying the Clinton campaign's simplistic smear that Trump is a Russian "Manchurian candidate."
"That reckless branding of Trump as a Russian agent, most...

By 2035, the US could find itself in an environment where Russia or China may match or even exceed the West's military and economic might in some areas, taking advantage of a “disordered and contested world,” the Pentagon’s research unit said...
Conflict and war in 2035 cannot be understood by...

Leaked revelations of the DNC's latest misconduct bear a disturbing resemblance to Cold War red-baiting.
Now wait a minute, all you upper-case “D” Democrats. A flood light suddenly shines on your party apparatus, revealing its grossly corrupt machinations to fix the primary process and sink the Sanders campaign, and within...

"I spoke to Foreign Minister Lavrov again today," he said.
"We both believe that we have an understanding of the direction we are going in and what needs to be achieved and our teams will meet shortly and we are going to continue to do that in order to bolster...

BRUSSELS — Russian diplomats on Wednesday offered a new plan to improve safety in the air over the Baltics in a rare meeting with NATO ambassadors, a small but significant step to ease tensions amid a troop buildup on both sides of the bristling NATO-­Russia border.
The proposal would commit...

Massive military exercises and a troop buildup on NATO's eastern flank reflect a dangerous new strategy.
For the first time in a quarter-century, the prospect of war—real war, war between the major powers—will be on the agenda of Western leaders when they meet at the NATO Summit in Warsaw, Poland,...

According to the diplomat, new formats of military activity have been launched in the new NATO member-states.
MOSCOW, NATO’s actions have provoked risks and challenges to Russia’s security interests and frustrated confidence, Anton Mazur, the leader of the Russian delegation to the Vienna talks on military security and arms control,...

These days, lamenting the apparently aimless character of Washington’s military operations in the Greater Middle East has become conventional wisdom among administration critics of every sort. Senator John McCain thunders that “this president has no strategy to successfully reverse the tide of slaughter and mayhem” in that region. Anthony...

Putin Returns to the Historical Pattern.
For half a millennium, Russian foreign policy has been characterized by soaring ambitions that have exceeded the country’s capabilities. Beginning with the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century, Russia managed to expand at an average rate of 50 square miles per...

Pipelines are the most favoured, common way of gas transportation across the world. Physical limitations to alternative ways of trading, geographical proximity, and political and economic reasons account for this.
In particular, gas can most efficiently be transported if compressed and injected into pipes, rather than converted into other states,...

The US is undermining opportunities for cooperation in Syria and Ukraine, while escalating NATO’s military presence near Russia.
Cohen laments that during the past two weeks the Obama administration appears to have been undermining cooperation with Moscow on three Cold War fronts.
Refusing to accept President Putin’s compelling argument that the...

The United States, Russia and China are now aggressively pursuing a new generation of smaller, less destructive nuclear weapons. The buildups threaten to revive a Cold War-era arms race and unsettle the balance of destructive force among nations that has kept the nuclear peace for more than a half-century.
It...

It’s not a strong Russia we should fear, but a weak one.
Every year, the security glitterati of the world gather in Germany for the annual Munich Security Conference. The forum has been around for decades, but this year, over an unseasonably warm weekend, the most dramatic speech was about...

Fifteen to 20 years ago, a canny friend of mine assured me that I would know I was in a different world when the Europeans said no to Washington. I’ve been waiting all this time and last week it seemed as if the moment had finally arrived. Germany, France,...